Industry Solutions and Tivoli

What's not to love with a beautiful evening like this(Sept.1) here at Arthur Ashe Stadium at the US Open? James Blake a local favorite, is closing the evening by hitting autographed tennis balls high into the stands after soundly winning his match tonight against Igor Andreev.

Earlier this evening we toured the IT command center with a number of our customers to get a first-hand look at how autonomic self-managing technologies are also winning the match on improving performance and a controlling cost.

To handle the two weeks of enormous activity generated by the US Open, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) needed a scalable, highly responsive infrastructure to complement its existing system. The IBM team designed this component, saving the USTA from making a large capital investment in a permanent infrastructure that would be underused 11 months of the year.

Using IBM technologies like virtualization and automation, the USTA can adjust to huge fluctuations in traffic volume and unpredictable usage. This project will help IBM control costs and give the opportunity to showcase IT optimization and autonomic computing capabilities.

What kind of usage does the USTA web site experience during an open? Here are some impressive stats from last year's open:

unique users: 2.8 million visits: 15.4 million page views: 95.8 million average time on site: 1 hour and 19 minutes peak concurrent scoreboards in session: 79,022 countries with visits to the site: 186 [Read More]

The latest in a steady stream of 'HAL' analogies to Autonomic Computing can be found in an article in this month's edition of Insight Magazine which is a publication targeted at the financial community. The article is titled: 'Technologies to Know and Learn' with the byline 'These 10 technologies and tech areas are helping to drive the finance industry advancement. Know them. Learn them. Use them.'

'2001: A Space Odyssey' goes down in my book(any many other people's books) as one of those movies that left quite the impression when it first came out(68?). Other movies that really impressed me when they first hit the box office (yes I am >29:) include: Star Wars(the first two ) Matrix (the first episode) Terminator I and II, and the first really good Vactors (Virtual Actors) such as Gollum/Smeagol and I,Robot. More than fantastic ground-breaking special effects, they challenged the established boundaries between technology and humans.

Self-managing autonomic technologies are also challenging the line between what IT professionals must do versus what technology can do for them. However, there is no HAL saying "I'm sorry Dave, I am going to have take over now" in the Autonomic strategy. This is all about a transformation to a better and more sensible balance between people and the technology they wrestle with.

The article in Insight actually does a good job of addressing this point. Here is an excerpt from the article by Clare Fitzgerald who recently talked with me. She writes...Rather than replacing the human element, however, automatic technologies are changing the nature of the partnership between systems administrators and the systems themselves. This technology is about making the systems work and reducing the number of times you have to call the help desk. For administrators, this means less time micromanaging their machines and more time thinking about solutions to real business technology issues.....

I will sign off now based on a message that I am receiving from the system that is currently monitoring me.'...Dave, Dave, turn off the light now...time to sleep...'[Read More]

nLayers, an IBM autonomic computing business partner, announced it has joined the IBM Self-Managing Autonomic Technology Mark Program.

This represents the fact that we have together demonstrated quantifiable business value for our customers based on autonomic standards and technology. Look for compelling customer success stories on the autonomic web site! [Read More]

It is Saturday and I am sitting outside in Woodbury Commons listening to The Shades open a set with a very cool jazz rendition of a favorite of mine, "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" by Cannonball Adderley. As I sit in the shade writing this blog, listening to live music I am grateful that someone up there had some mercy on me today. Woodbury Commons, a maze of 220 fashion outlets, is to some shoppers, a dream come true. To others like me, this place goes in the worst nightmare bucket. This table and chair in the shade, with a view of Bear Mountain, listening to jazz (while my wife and daughter and one million other shoppers sift tirelessly thru racks in windowless, chairless technobeat laden air-condtioned rooms) is what I would call a gift of heavenly mercy.

Someone this week actually asked if AC was doing innovation for innovation's sake. Well, I think we all agree that the last thing we need is innovation for innovation sake. Yes we are focused on innovation, but innovation for business value's sake! That is why we devote a significant part of the budget on collaborative programs with customers and business partners to create and iterate on standards and technology that is focused in delivering quantifiable value to our customers.

I had a great meeting this week with IBM business partners,Enigmatec. Duncan Johnston-Watt and Kevin O'Donnell met with me in New York where we explored a number of opportunities where we could combine our technologies to best demonstate the value in our collaboration. One of the great things about my job is the opportunity to meet with so many talented people like Duncan and Kevin. There is some really cool work being done to solve the many problems of complexity and our common goal in autonomic computing is to bring them together in a way that results in quantifiable business value.

I think I have made my point. If you see a car drive by with the bumper stickers: 'Business value or Bust!' and 'Born NOT to shop!' that's me! If anyone would like to debate that well then mercy me, blog me![Read More]

Recently I had the opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made in autonomic problem determination standards and technology adoption across the portfolio of IBM products. Impressive progress has already resulted in a portfolio of IBM products available to assist in problem determination for the most complex environments. Here is a quick summary:

The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) announced the ratification of Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) in March 2005. The (WSDM) Event Format (WEF) is part of the WSDM 1.0 standard and is based on IBM's submission of Common Base Event(CBE) to OASIS.

IBM, along with other companies have been busy implementing CBE support in their products, because of the immediate customer value that can be derived from such a common event format. Support is already available in products such as DB2, Websphere Application Server, and many others. IBM has also provided tools from Rational like the Performance Optimizer ToolKit and the Problem Resolution ToolKit for Rational Application Development that help analyze events from multiple products to aid in problem determination. Tivoli will also be providing monitoring solutions that receive and analyze Common Base Events. CBE based tools and technologies can even be downloaded see the Autonomic Computing Toolkit along with hundreds of adaptors for IBM and non-IBM legacy log files.

Now that the WSDM technical committee has approved the WEF standard, IBM is already working to support the WEF standard in future products. Open standards are an important part of the IBM Autonomic Computing initiative. IBM has made, and will continue to make, key autonomic computing contributions, such as the Common Base Event, to open standards bodies such as OASIS. WEF is a good example of the value that standards can deliver. Without an industry standard event format that can drive convergence, events would remain in different formats, making it extraordinarily difficult and complex to accomplish end-to-end system management in a multi-vendor, heterogeneous environment.

Without a common format, numerous experts and sets of product-specific tooling are required to diagnose problems. CBE and WEF provide a unified, easily correlated, common event format that enable problem diagnosis across a wide range of heterogeneous resources, which in turn enables increased automation of IT processes. As an OASIS standard, WEF offers the potential to accelerate industry adoption of a standard event format for systems management.

So with all these product implementations there is no room for excuses! Get started today! If improving productivity and availability is important to you, download the toolkit or take advantage of the numerous products now available to build your self-managing autonomic technology advantage.[Read More]

What is really hitting the mark, however, is the quantifiable business value that this new and exciting program is delivering to IT shops such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. MOMA has recently undergone extensive renovation and if you haven't toured its galleries lately I highly recommend it! The recently completed building project represents MoMA's most extensive redefinition since its founding seventy-five years ago. MOMA is also a leader in the arts when it comes to applying the latest technologies to enable web based commerce and online collection viewings for its' members. Read what Steve Peltzman, MOMA CIO, has to say about his collaboration with nLayers and IBM in this week's Computerworld article IBM Adds Autonomic Tools to Speed Up Error Detection. He compares the MOMA autonomic project to having intelligent robots around to do the mundane tasks for you. And the 'robots' are able to alert IT staff to problems before the help desk gets the call. The author of this Computerworld article, Patrick Thibodeau, also spoke with Peter Stone, a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, who was one of the speakers at the second International Conference on Autonomic Computing last month in Seattle. Peter makes the point that given where IT infrastructures are headed, autonomic computing "just has to happen!"

There have been numerous other success stories from others as well, such as Carey Capaldi from Technicolor, another leading edge company benefiting from autonomic technology that supported Steven Spielberg's recent release 'War of the Worlds.' I saw this movie last weekend and really enjoyed it. It is a classic completely redone with superb digital effects, acting, and direction. It stars Tom Cruise as a deadbeat dad that (after hiding under the kitchen table with his kids) really rose to the challenge in delivering his daughter and his son from the jaws of aliens to the arms of MOMA. Technicolor labs in North Hollywood and New York provided all of the front end lab processing for Paramount and DreamWorks' 'War of the Worlds.' Technicolor services included front end dailies processing utilizing the ENR process to convey the film's futuristic look... And supporting Technicolor's intensive digital archive runs is our latest autonomic computing problem determination technology! Capaldi describes the autonomic technology as able to tie all the logs together, to view relationships between system technologies and pinpoint where problems occur. The next stage of our project at Technicolor is to build in control loops to drive automated response to problems. This will help to enable Technicolor to meet agressive movie production schedules more reliably and predictably with less cost.

Each business partner has worked with us to demonstrate clear business value with a customer, which is one of the prerequisites of using the IBM Self-Managing Autonomic Technology Mark, in addition to adoption of autonomic standards and technology. This mark provides a clear differentiator for products that are focused on reducing complexity and providing self-managing capabilities. Andrew Cunningham, Head of Shared Infrastructure, Reuters, spoke about the mark stating "This assures us the product will fit smoothly and seamlessly into Reuters' plans for a more self-managing IT environment ensuring the service quality and availability of our own solutions and thus help give us a competitive edge in the market place."

When we work together in this way to help business be successful with technology then we know we are really hitting the mark and winning the war on complexity![Read More]

For many, autonomic computing is likely to conjure up the vision IBM first introduced to the industry almost 4 years ago. That vision has now translated to a comprehensive set of services, software, ingredient branding, and industry participation that clearly has brought autonomic computing to 'center stage.' Industry leaders are now actively participating with IBM to make self-managing IT systems a reality, and customers and Business Partners are seeing self-managing autonomic technology deliver significant, quantifiable value today.

Today the following press release was issued: IBM Launches New Autonomic Offerings for Self-Managing IT Systems There are four major parts to today's announcement: 1) New service offerings to accelerate business value from autonomic computing, 2) New Autonomic Software that helps drive down cost and improve availability, 3) Unprecedented industry participation in standards for improved customer IT manageability, and 4) A new ingredient branding program that helps clients identify partner products that deliver improved manageability.

The first story to hit the press regarding this announcement came from Paula Musich, from eWeek(thank you Paula!) entitled IBM Hits Autonomic Milestone Paula did a great job of summarizing how the new accelerator offerings from IGS will help address customer IT issues. Paula also highlighted the significance of high level industry collaboration taking place in autonomic computing as well as the new software and the new ingredient branding program which in Paula's words is IBM's creation of 'its own autonomic form of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.'

It's exciting to step back and consider where we are today with our journey towards self-managing systems. Our collaboration as an industry and with our customers is paying off - delivering real value to businesses that is saving time and expense on IT tasks! Now that is worth writing about! so stay tuned - cause we're going prime time![Read More]

I am waiting for my flight at SFO so I thought I would post one more blog from my week at Supernova2005. Here are some of the quotes I enjoyed from one of the Supernova2005 Wiki's this week:

Linda Stone: "Being connected is what makes us feel alive" "What's the new aphrodisiac - committed attention and focus. Is there a higher compliment than being given this focus. Trusted filters, trusted protectors, truster concierge. Filters for signal from news. Meaningful connections that make us feel secure. These are the new opportunities." "Leisure time is what makes us human."

Like many things, you get out of them what you put into them, right? The same is certainly true with collaboration, especially globally. This morning the focus was on the importance of learning from the bottom-up, from the end-user, how 'swarm ecosystems' drive 'swarm innovation.' It is all about sharing ideas to build knowledge as opposed to knowledge monopolies. It is about the customer as the innovator (ref 'The Only Sustainable Edge' by Brown and Hagel )

Sharing ideas is really what Supernova2005 is all about: Connecting worlds through connected platforms. Recently, I have been blogging on how IBMs Autonomic Computing Initiative is connecting technology and people in a unique way and this week we bring our story to Supernova.

Alan Ganek was featured in today's Spotlight Talk sesison. Alan first reviewed the industry wide grand challenge of building self-managing systems - he further explained our focus on integrating technologies with a focus on task accomplishment as opposed to delivering disassociated silos of technologies.

We are providing a variety of ways to 'swarm' with innovators worldwide. Given the industry wide global challenge, our approach leverages the latest collaborative methodologies and technologies including web based development portals and downloadable autonomic toolkits. About 35,000 people per month collaborate in The Autonomic Computing Zone.

Common components for Self-Managing Autonomic Technology provide for an open framework for the industry and access to technology is provided AS it is being developed, and at no charge. These are components that stand on their own and can be embedded into other systems and applications. Of course another key facilitator is using/defining open standards. Some of the things we are doing to facilitate global collaboration...

My mother used to ask me this all the time and I never knew quite what to say. I am finally on a mission to find out. I have just requested a kit to submit a DNA sample. This afternoon at Supernova2005 , Kris Lichter from IBM, gave his perspective on the Genographic Poject.

IBM and National Geographic's Genographic Project is the most ambitious genetic anthropology research initiative in history, with plans to gather one of the largest collections of DNA samplesto map how humankind populated the planet. All data will be submitted to a central DNA Analysis Reposirtory (DAR) in Washington, DC built on IBM H/W and S/W technology. This is truly a global collaborative initiative as over 100,000 people contribute DNA and in return will learn about their own heritage and their family's journey throught the ages. The results will be available via a private logon to a secure web site.

Over 49,000 kits were acquired by the public worldwide within the first ten weeks with over $1M generated to help the world's unique remaining tribal populations. In addition, several unsolicited offers to participate from the global scientific community have resulted.

I arrived at SFO yesterday to attend Supernova. San Francisco always surprises me with its cool and refreshing summer breezes.

This morning's Supernova began with a talk by Jonathan Schwartz(Pres. and COO of Sun Microsystems) followed bya panel discussion by Catherine Fake(Flickr) ,Amy Jo Kim(SocialDesigner), Mena Trott(Six APart), Lili Cheng(MS), and Evan Williams(Odeo) Here are some discussion points...

Will the internet and intranet remain distinct? Should corporate leaders have an external and internal blog? Jonathan , answered that he only has one blog for all communications, in response to Amy Wohl, http://www.wohl.com/ early this morning, the first full day of Supernova2005. Blogs can effectively flatten the traditional hierarchial communications structure as a way to insure your message gets through - in tact. Jonathan maintains that his transparent use of blogging is critical to being an effective leader in today's world. btw, Jonathan is listed as a top corporate blogger by Deepblog http://www.deepblog.com/ which is a website focused on helping to identify leading bloggers amongst those now numbering in the millions.

We are moving to a different world of communication as the lines and space between between entry and senior roles in corporations, personal and professional, adult and juvenile, are being redrawn by technologies such as www, blogging, instant messaging, mobile communications, virtual world 'gaming', personal websites, chatrooms, wiki's,etc. Those in their twenties are naturally leading the charge. The power is shifting to the people, to the employees, away from (as my daughter puts it) 'the man.' Datasharing and personal publishing is becoming more and more a part of our daily routine. With all that his technology has to offer, what implications are there to the permanent archiving and subsequent availability of such sharing as we move forward?[Read More]

The most fun we had working out Chicago tunes in my former band called 'Bug and the Symptoms'(formed by members of the VTAM software development team)was the collaboration and then enjoying together our unique rendering that resulted each time we played together. John Sant'Ambrogio, principal cellist, St Louis Symphony , speaking on the creative aspect of collaboration said '...art, by its very nature, seems to involve a working together- a collaboration between performers, or between artist and audience, or even between the musician and the notes on the page...the cooperative spirit - a sharing,a give and take - is inherent in the creative experience...'

Software design and development has been often referred to as an art(ref: Knuth, Ganssle, and others)as much as a science. I have also seen it done as a team sport. MIT Technology Review, November 2003, wrote about Zero G 's collaborative approach to improving quality via extreme programming whose precepts include: Interaction between developers and customers and that Programmers should work in pairs, sharing one screen...

As the autonomic team participates in this week's IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing in Seattle and prepares to participate in next week's Supernova in San Francisco we have been working on how to share our story of collaboration with some of the best software 'artists' on this planet. This collaboration is made possible on a global level by the latest enabling technologies: www, open standards, downloadable toolkits, web based development portals, web based support, etc. Preparing for ICAC and Supernova has caused us to pause and consider the tremendous impact this collaboration has had on our advance towards the autonomic vision. Previous development methodologies would have never gotten us to where we are today. Working together... visionary companies, leading universities, creative individuals, etc... creates a virtual team capable of building next generation self-managing systems and ushering in next generation business models...[Read More]

I wanted to point out an important announcement this week from Macrovision regarding the availability of their product which is a result of more than two years of collaboration with the IBM autonomic team and other industry leaders to build foundational technologies and new industry standards for self-configuring systems. As you recall(see earlier blog entry) an important announcement was recently released from Oasis entitled, OASIS Forms Committee to Standardize Software Installation Characteristics for Lifecycle Management This represents unprecedented industry collaboration in the self-configuring space that, coupled with this significant announcement from Macrovision, represents a set of game-changing events for lifecycle management in distributed, multi-platform environments that (and here is the really good news from Macrovision) can deliver real value to our customers today.

Other important announcement by Macrovision this week was their acquistion of Zero G. Zero G has been a key collaborative force in driving and defining Self-Configuring standards and technologies.[Read More]

Some topics for discussion and to jumpstart your thinking after a long memorial day weekend. (The only thing I am up to exercising is my brain after an overly ambitious tree planting project this weekend...red maples, bradford pears, mountain ash, and a peach tree!)

Can self-awareness be achieved for IT infrastructers? What would enable self-awareness? Neural Networks? Self-adapting Programs? or some other Biological inspired Solution?

As systems become more automated will they become more brittle?

Can we formalize everything into policies?

Some maintain that manual is still better for the most complex tasks? Do you agree?